Baba Yaga (mother_of_bones) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2009-09-24 17:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | baba yaga, merlin |
Who: Baba Yaga as Beatrice Yvette & Merlin
What: Follow-up to his invitation
Where: The Camelot Arms apartments, near Central Park east
When: Late Thursday morning
Warnings: TBD.
Baba Yaga had yet to get her hands around the proverbial neck of her house, and she was still weary and bedraggled from summoning the energy and power needed to rebuild Midday's Herbs'n'Things for Lady Midday, nearly a month earlier.
Today, she was feeling decidedly merry, despite the ache that penetrated her bones, the cracking of her joints with each slow step down the sidewalk. A stranger had seen her home! And an immortal stranger, at that! (For who else would be able to truly see her house - chicken legs and all - running amuck as it tended to do?) She had not told him who she was, but she had a good idea of who he might be. Merlin, he had said. She'd read a few books in her day. Celtic lore was one that was hard to ignore and harder to forget, even for an old Russian witch.
She'd procured herself a cane, and this eased her discomfort mightily. Still, what should have taken no time at all took quite a bit of time. There was likely some time in between in which Baba Yaga had slipped off this plane altogether, and walked without a cane, in a place that looked a lot like this place, but with fewer tourists and with a sun overhead that shone with a different and eerie light, as if it were perpetually dusk - her world, the realm of shadows and endless dark forests, where Baba Yaga existed as the ultimate symbol of transition and rite of passage, a death goddess in her own right. Time passed more quickly when she did this, but even slipping between worlds sapped what was left of her strength.
Every day her age shifted, every hour she could feel and look decades younger or older, depending on her energy, her will power, her moods. People passed the elderly woman in a hurry, brushing against her as they did so in their blind rush to meet deadlines that were certainly more important than stopping and assisting the death crone as she nearly stumbled over a chair at a corner Starbucks.
The lack of grace that came with her stooped form and slow, torturous gait was willing on her part. Behind the veil of 'Homeless Bag Lady' she'd imposed on herself for the past forty odd years, was a creature that thrived on testing the so called heroism and will of the mortal coil, rewarding inhuman kindness and grace to those who could endure the impossible tasks she would give them.
But, she had noticed that she now existed in society's blind spot, and was quite happy being there, unseen. Every now and then, a kind soul reached out his hand, and Merlin was one of those souls. As she finally approached the building, she attempted to straighten her form, a chorus of cracks and pops along her spine as she did so. Her face took on a younger, kinder light, gentle and yielding and sweet. She set the cane aside, where it abruptly molded into the trunk of a miniature potted tree.
Squinting, she peered over the list of names, a hand lifting to adjust her spectacles. "Hmm," she mused, and pressed one of the buttons, startling a bit when the buzzer sounded and the door opened. Yes. Baba Yaga startled easily at strange mechanical noises. It was one of her many eccentricities. She might have made a small noise in surprise. Just maybe.